This article appears in the Winter 2018 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Susbcribe here . In the 2018 midterms, the women of this country delivered a severe rebuke to President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. The seeds were planted by the 2017 Women’s March, by many accounts the largest single-day demonstration in American history. Thousands of women subsequently decided to run for office, including the hundreds who ran for the House of Representatives (up from 120 in 2016). A record 126 women will serve in the 116th Congress. Nearly 60 percent of women voted for Democratic candidates, resulting in a historic 23-point gender gap between the parties. It is tempting to argue that this is all about Trump. He ran against the first female major-party nominee for president, in a race where his attitudes and behavior toward women were on full display. The Access Hollywood tape in which Trump revealed his penchant for unwanted advances, the toleration of sexual harassment...

The erosion of the gender gap in this election starkly illustrates Alan Brinkley's insights regarding how issues of class and values pose challenges for progressives and the Democratic Party. In the last two presidential elections, the Democratic candidate won among women fairly decisively, by 16 points (Bill Clinton) and 11 points (Al Gore), respectively. In contrast, John Kerry won women voters by a mere 3 points, 51 percent to 48 percent. Kerry's trouble with women is clearly rooted in the decline of support among white, blue-collar women for Democratic candidates, a trend that reached its low point to date in this election. During the 1990s, Democratic candidates struggled with white, blue-collar women while gaining ground with college-educated women. In 2000, Gore won 53 percent of the vote among women with a high-school education or less, 50 percent of the vote among women with some college education, and 57 percent of the vote among women with a college education. This...

A new generation is coming of age in America and politicians ignore it at their peril. Generation Y, as it's been called, is expected to be as large as the Baby Boom Generation, and when the full group is of voting age, it could have as much political significance. It is a generation that has thus far shown itself to be disdainful of politics, cynical about political parties and more likely than any other age group to support third-party candidates. At the same time, these young people are engaged in the life of the community and expect to improve it. To write them off politically is to risk someone else mobilizing a sleeping giant. But reaching Generation Y voters will take some doing. They have little interest in retirement security or reforming Medicare, the dominant political issues of the last few election cycles. They are a racially diverse and, in many ways, a politically progressive group; as a result, more of them call themselves Democrats than do their predecessors in...

T he gender gap is commonly understood as a story about women. Since 1980 women, repelled by the Republican position on social justice, economic inequality, gun control, military issues, and reproductive rights, have voted and identified as disproportionately Democratic. This summer, as Gore languished, a different story emerged. Women seemed briefly willing to support a kinder, gentler Republican presidential candidate who talked about education, Social Security, and tax relief. However, in the post-convention period, women have returned to the Democratic fold with the enthusiasm we would expect given the policy differences between the candidates. But there is another gender gap, and it is male. Over time, men have been deserting the Democratic Party in greater numbers than women have been embracing it. We might believe this loss does not matter so long as women remain the core of the Democratic coalition. But women are not monolithic; in most elections in the 1990s, white women...

I sn't there something puzzling about our current political debate? With a popular Democrat having served two terms in the White House, the nation has seen sustained economic growth with low unemployment and low inflation. A well-qualified vice president is positioned to carry Democratic policies forward. If he were to gain Democratic majorities in Congress, he might be able to confront nagging problems such as inequality in the midst of prosperity. After all, the public puts more trust in the Democrats on almost everything that matters: securing Social Security's stability, reforming health care, raising education standards, and protecting the environment. Polls show that the public has more confidence in the Democrats to handle the economy and the budget. There is somewhat more trust in the Republicans to handle taxes and crime, but less markedly so than before the Clinton administration. The public turns to the Republicans on few other issues. Yet this seeming mandate for Democrats...